10 Surprising Reasons Why You Should Sleep Without Clothes

Only 12% of Americans go to sleep without clothes. But there’s a strong case to be made that we should all skip the PJs and sleep in our birthday suits instead. If you found this post, its because you’re considering doing just the same.

Pajamas can be comfortable and cozy, but is that something you cant get from your comforter or your partner? Its time to ignore the pro-pajama propaganda were bombarded with on a daily basis and go commando in the bedroom.

1] Body Can Better Regulate Its Temperature

One of the two most important things we do in the bedroom- and well discuss the second of these things in just a moment- is get some valuable shut-eye. The decisions we make about our pre-sleep routine and our night-time environment hinge on whether they help us to get a better nights sleep, or not. So how does sleeping without pajamas fit in?

Well, as it turns out, choosing to sleep nude will help you get better sleep. There are many ways in which it helps. The Los Angeles Sleep Study Institute has reported that problems with body temperature regulation are a major reason why insomniacs struggle to get to sleep at night. Sleeping with no pajamas stops you from overheating while you’re asleep.

We’ve all experienced it: waking up from a warm night, uncomfortably sticky and sweaty. Maybe somebody turned the thermostat up in the night (again!), or perhaps it was just a night of unseasonable warmth. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re sweaty, sticky, uncomfortable and unhappy.

That’s not to mention that now you have to wash your PJs, and maybe even your sheets if you sweat an awful lot! Sleeping without PJs will mean that your body can naturally cool down. This is particularly useful if your body overheats due to menopause. You won’t feel so stifled in the night, and you won’t wake up time and time again as you struggle with the heat.

2] It WILL Improve Your Marriage

Okay, maybe this isn’t the most surprising point on our list. But it’s just too important not to mention. If both you and your partner decide to sleep nude, your love life might just dramatically improve. If you both regularly wear PJs to bed, you probably don’t spend a whole lot of time naked around one another. And changing that can bring a little more spark to your marriage or relationship.

Its all backed up by real science. Skin-on-skin contact releases a powerful hormonal cocktail in the brain mostly made up of oxytocin, also known as the ‘Love Hormone. It’s the hormone that’s the basis of the strongest relationships, which is why its released in large quantities during skin on skin contact.

The first thing that oxytocin does is to make you feel closer to whoever you’re with. But not only will you feel closer to your partner, but you’ll also feel calmer and happier too. A study presented at a 2007 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience highlighted how prairie voles- yes, prairie voles- were happier in stressful situations when injected with oxytocin.

Not only that but there are all sorts of interesting research on how oxytocin helps form emotional memories, too. Its an all in one positive hormone that we just can’t get enough of! So be like the prairie vole: sleep nude, and feel happy.

3] Oxytocin Has Other Benefits

Besides making you feel closer to your partner, oxytocin has an amazing range of positive benefits. As we pointed out, its released during skin-on-skin contact; but its also released during birth, during lactation, and even during sex. So, its little wonder that it has so many side effects and ‘uses.

The first of these is that studies suggest that it might help to protect you from heart disease! Oxytocin reduces your blood pressure, which is the main cause of heart attacks and other heart issues. Oxytocin can also help to reduce tissue inflammation, making the healing process quicker and reducing mild allergic reactions too.

Besides protecting your heart health, oxytocin also makes your ‘heart feel better. Oxytocin is central to combating anxiety, which the majority of us will experience at some point in our lives. If you have a stressful job, or a stressful home life, anxiety is the familiar tightness you might feel in your chest. Well, oxytocin can help get rid of that uncomfortable feeling, and help you feel calmer and happier during stressful times.

On a more general note, oxytocin will make you feel more optimistic, and happier about your life and the people around you. That’s why you feel happy during those most joyous of times with loved ones because your body produces and releases more oxytocin! So when you think about it, it’s incredible that you can get a little slice of that happiness just by sleeping naked.

4] Sleeping Nude Increases Fertility

Okay, just to get the idea out of your head: no, we aren’t saying that you’ll be more fertile sleeping nude because you’re enjoying your partner’s company more. We’re talking about actually increasing your chances of conception. Believe it or not, its all backed up by real science. We aren’t making this up.

You may have heard all sorts of stories about how heat can affect sperm count. And it’s true. Spermatozoa aren’t supposed to be too cold or too warm, and if they stay outside of their preferred temperature for too long, they’ll start to die off, and production will slow down. That’s why you might have heard that laptops can decrease sperm count.

What else can decrease sperm count? Wearing tight-fitting boxer shorts or Y-Fronts. Tight clothing keeps the temperature around the testes far too high. This makes it almost impossible for sperm to be produced and results in a much lower sperm count. And since sperm production takes 10 to 11 weeks, the effects are long-lasting, too.

Doctors recommend either wearing loose clothing to bed, but even better is to sleep naked. Your testes will be at a far more comfortable temperature than if you wear tight boxer shorts to bed, which in the long run, will help boost your sperm count!

5] Avoid Infections and Hygiene Issues

Since reason #4 was for men, reason #5 is for any women reading. Vaginal health is essential, but can be tricky to get just right: there’s a balance you have to strike between washing regularly, and washing too often and not allowing natural processes to do their thing. But if you’ve repeatedly had rashes and infections, and you just can’t figure out why wearing underwear to bed might be a part of the problem.

You might be tempted to think that sleeping nude is less hygienic than wearing pajamas. But if you work a stressful, busy or smelly job, you should be showering before bed anyway! And over the course of the night, the sweat we produce and the bacteria that feed on them that are the main problem. PJs just make that problem worse.

Also, bacteria prefer warm and moist environments too, which is why armpits and feet are so smelly. This is the case for both women and men and links back to the fact that PJs make you sweat much more than sleeping in the nude would. And, again, it reduces the risk of more general bacterial infections.

6] Your Skin Will Age Better

Okay, now we’re at the point where real scientific reasons start to sound a little more like… Magic! How on earth could sleeping nude help you look better as you age? It all sounds suspiciously similar to claim that rosemary can cure cancer, or that a rain dance can make it rain.

But the idea that choosing to sleep naked can help you age better is all based on real, scientific concepts. Like many things, its all based on hormones and altering your hormonal balance. To be more specific, sleeping in the nude has been proven to increase the levels of both HGH (human growth hormone) and melatonin. The body produces more of each when your body is cooler, which it will be if you sleep naked.

HGH primarily has been in vogue in recent years. Hollywood A-listers can visit any number of clinics to have HGH injections, which are supposed to do everything from combat wrinkles and dull skin to boost your sex drive! Studies over the last decade or so show that it can help wounds to heal faster, which has made HGH the go-to anti-aging treatment today.

Melatonin isn’t talked about quite as much but is just as effective. One of its many properties is that it makes the capillaries- the tiny blood vessels close to the skin- dilate at night. This cools the body down to help you sleep, but also brings vital blood and oxygen to your skin which it wouldn’t otherwise get in anywhere near the same quantities.

7] PJs Are a Waste of Time and Money

Okay, this might be stretching it a little: but PJs are a huge waste of time and money! Well, maybe not huge, but… They’re somewhat of a waste of time and money that you won’t have to invest if you sleep in the birthday suit that God gave you.

Just think of the money you spend on PJs each year: maybe $20, $30 a set. That is unless you buy a cheap set, and spend all night itching and feeling uncomfortable. Alright, that’s not the biggest expense you’ll be making each year, but it’s better to keep $30 than spend it on something you don’t need. Treat yourself to something you’ll enjoy, instead!

Not only that but they’re a waste of time. Every morning, you get changed out of them. Every night, you change into them. And you have to wash them regularly, too, unless you want them to stink! All this time you’ve spent washing your PJs, hanging them out to dry, putting them away, buying the perfect pair from the store… All wasted time that you can be free from if you just chose to sleep nude.

8] You’ll De-stress

Another benefit of sleeping without any clothes on is that it will help you de-stress after a long day. And no, that isn’t because you’re more likely to ‘spend time with your partner. That doesn’t hurt after a long day at work. No, you can de-stress by sleeping naked because of, you guessed it, the power of hormones.

But this time its nothing to do with either HGH or melatonin. Instead, the hormone cortisol (or more specifically, the amount of the hormone in the bloodstream declining) will help you to de-stress while you’re asleep.

Cortisol is produced naturally over the course of the day and more when you’re in stressful situations. So if you work a busy job, or you had to deal with a particularly annoying client or customer, your feelings of frustration were partly down to cortisol.

The deeper you sleep, the more time your body has to get rid of any excess in your bloodstream. That’s why you feel so content after a good nights sleep when you weren’t disturbed by any nightingales, owls, or partners stealing your fair share of the comforter. So since sleeping without any clothes on can help you get deeper, less disturbed sleep, it can also lower the levels of cortisol in your bloodstream.

9] Youll Improve Your Self-Esteem

Another thing that sleeping naked, especially if you also sleep without a bra, can do is improve your self-esteem. Now, some people don’t have any problem with their confidence- some lucky, lucky people- but for the rest of us, anything that can help us feel a little better after a long day is a good thing. And research suggests that being naked at night can provide just such a boost.

The logic is relatively straightforward. Think: how often are you completely naked? There’s the brief time when you shower or bathe. And then there’s the time you spend alternating between your PJs and your regular clothes. So how can you ever confront your lack of confidence, if you never even see your own body?

If your lack of confidence is related to thinking that you’re ugly, shapeless or anything similar, then being naked and seeing your own naked body can help you to normalize and understand your body. And if you have scarring or a medical condition, and feel ashamed of your body, being naked will help you to come to terms with the problem, accept it and feel happy with yourself no matter what.

10] When You Wake Up, You Have to Get Ready

Our last reason for encouraging you to sleep in the nude is that it helps you to get up and to get ready in the morning. If you wear PJs on a Friday or Saturday night, its easy for your day to turn into a slobby day around the house. Now, that’s good enough for some, but not for us productive go-getters.

There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in on the weekend, and with having a little ‘me-time. But for some people, especially if they’re depressed, the problem runs deeper. When you’re depressed, you find it very difficult to drum up the motivation for getting up, let alone doing anything with your day. Sleeping nude can be a nifty trick that you can use to combat that, whether you’re depressed or you want to make the most out of your Sunday.

Going to bed naked means that you have to be ready and able to face whatever the day might throw at you. Sleeping nude, and somebody knocks at the door? You cant answer without getting dressed first. Well, unless you want to give them the surprise of their life, that is. No, you’ll have to get dressed first, which will set you up for the rest of the day.

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Louise was inspired to start the Sleep Bubble after her friend struggled with insomnia. After finding only misleading advice and complicated science, she set about making a good night’s sleep accessible for all. 5 years on, Louise now heads up Sleep Bubble, and also holds an Associate’s Degree in Polysomnography (otherwise known as Sleep Study).

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